Baidu Faces Challenges In Data Center Cooling In China

4 years ago

As the need for Data Centers continues to grow across the world, the need for clean air becomes equally important because clean air is needed for cooling purposes. The case of Baidu in China becomes self evident of the inevitable need for clean air for Data Center cooling.

Beijing Smog

It is known by many people that some of the Chinese cities such as Beijing have some of the worst air pollution problems among the major cities of the world. Air pollution problem is more on the eastern part of China, where Baidu has three of its Data Centers. Baidu, one of the IT giant companies have been experiencing serious cooling problems in China resulting from the poor air quality standards in China often referred to as the Beijing Fog. According to published results, the poor air quality standards in China have resulted in higher equipment failures for Baidu in its Data Center cooling operations. Among the pollutants includes Sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, as well as Particulate matter 2.5. One recent measurement of Particulate Matter in Beijing puts its level at 150 considered as unhealthy by U.S. standards.

Some experts are proposing using liquids to cool Data Centers because air moving fans may not be sufficient at times to cool large numbers of mainframes and many supercomputers. Such idea is gaining momentum and aided by new technologies, it is possible liquids may be used in future for cooling purposes. Some of the benefits of liquid cooling include:

It costs less

Liquid cooling is more effective

It is also more efficient

Will reduce air pollution

Need for new Data Center Solutions.

As today’s economy continues to evolve, it has become obvious that new data centers would be the source for new business growth and development. IT technology ultimately will take greater role as the engines that drive world economies. In an upcoming Data Center World Conference scheduled to take place in Maryland in September, 2015, the Vice president of MTM Technologies, Bill Kleyman will be discussing ways in which Data Centers will evolve over the coming years. Klyman said, “Every organization today is becoming a digital entity that has a lot of implications for how IT is actually managed. There will be no more silos inside the data center.”

Self Contained Data Center

The concept of self contained data centers is relatively new, but has been around for a while. The idea was brought forward in 2007 by Roger Gooch. More self contained data centers are springing up in many places even some cities such as Coral Springs Florida run its own self contained data center with separate air-conditioned units and fire suppression centers. Some experts in this field believe the idea is good, and exceeds the norm of traditional data centers and also incorporates society’s mantra of clean environment and going green. When many more Data Centers embrace the technology of clean environment, perhaps such awareness may lead to better air quality standards which will leave cities such as Beijing less polluted than it is currently.